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somewhere. So, along comes my mate with this horse. Socrates. Good fucking timing, so's I thought. Fourteen to one. What a chance. He gave me three days' notice, don't put the bet on till just before the off, the usual thing. So's in that three days I borrowed and collected as much money as I could. Put myself in debt with about five different bastards. All sorts that youse just wouldn't want to mess with. The sort of eejits that make Billy's Sammy the Buddhist bloke look like, I don't know, a Buddhist. These were bad men. But I did it. Got together about ten grand. Suspicious, I know, but I just thought, sod it. This is my chance, I've got to do it.'
    He stopped to take a breath. He was coming to the crunch, and they all knew what was going to happen next.
    'And sure enough, the horse won,' he said eventually, confounding all expectations. 'I had a hundred and forty grand, I paid back all the bampot moneylenders, and I was sitting pretty. Life was a bed of roses. I was made, you know. Blinking made. Started calling myself Socrates in honour of that fine beast. I could've shagged that horse, no question.'
    A few puzzled looks around the room, the temporary pause in the narrative finally filled by the inevitable question, voiced by The Hammer.
    'What's the score, then, Big Man? I thought you were going to say the horse lost and you killed your mate?'
    Socrates shook his head, and stared ruefully at each member of the group in turn. Now that it came to it, he was quite enjoying being the centre of attention. He'd got them hooked. A natural storyteller. He could be on Radio 4. Book at Bedtime, with Socrates McCartney .
    'I made an arse of it,' he said. 'I mean, I only needed about thirty grand to be going on with. I could've paid for the wedding, booked the honeymoon, and put a down payment on a decent enough house, you know. But I had too much cash, I couldn't handle it all. I was twenty-two and I couldn't cope. I freaked, no other word for it. Booked myself a first-class ticket to Las Vegas and went and stayed in some posh gaffe. For two weeks I played all the big casinos, shagged hundreds of birds, did all sorts of drugs, totally went for it, you know. Right in there. The big time. Best two weeks of my life. Blew the lot. I mean, after a week, I might even have been ahead of the game, I'm no' sure, but by the end I'd blown the lot. And of course, I'd walked out on the work without a word, thinking I was some sort of big shot with no need for a job. And I didn't tell wee Agnes where I was going. So I gets back to Bridgeton, and what do I have? Fuck all. I've lost all my money, I've no job, I've nothing. I have to tell Agnes, of course, and you can't blame the lassie, she's fucked off.'
    'What exactly did you tell her?' asked The Hammer.
    'The works. I just went for it. Told her everything. The money, the gambling, the shagging, the drugs.'
    'And?'
    'She dumped me. Told me to sling my hook, and buggered off with my wee mate Billy Milk Teeth.'
    'You can't blame the lassie,' said Katie Dillinger.
    'Oh, aye, I didn't. I'm no' saying that. To be fair to the girl she did the right thing. I'm no' saying any different. Not at all. Billy was a decent enough lad, I wasn't blaming him either.'
    'So what happened?' asked Dillinger.
    'She sent her three brothers round to do me in and I killed them.'
    'Oh.'
    'I mean, I didn't mean to. It wasn't as if I was blaming them for what happened. It wasn't as if I gave a shite. But they turned up to kick my head in and I lost my rag. Went a bit off my napper. Started smacking them about a bit, and ended up wellying the living shite out of them all. Felt bad about it, you know, when it was all over. I'm a bit of a philosopher, like I said, and I've thought about it long and hard. Rage, you see, is just like any other human need. Once it's sated, well, it's done, isn't it? It's all a matter of control. It's like when you're gasping for sex and you hitch up with some stankmonster just for the sake of